Davisco CEO Jon Davis has announced that Davisco Foods International's cheese business employees and chief executive will stay on after the company is acquired Agropur.

Davis said the decision to sell was a difficult one, but was the best option for Davisco given the industry's rapid consolidation.

"The world is getting smaller, and in order to play in it you have to have scope, size and critical mass. That might sound like a business school lecture, but it's true," Davis said. "Our playing field just got a lot bigger, and that brings a lot of opportunity for all of us, especially our employees. We're not going to lose any of them, in fact we're probably going to add."

The acquisition will double Agropur’s processing operations in the U.S. and increase the co-op's global milk intake by 50 percent. After the deal goes through on August 1, 2014, Agropur will own three Davisco cheese processing factories, an ingredients plant in Nicollet, Minnesota, the Friendly Confines Cheese Shoppe in Le Sueur and three distribution centers abroad. The package also includes sales offices in Eden Prairie, Shanghai, Singapore and Geneva.

Agropur spokesman Marc Labelle said Davisco will operate as a standalone business for now, but that Agropur would methodically integrate the company one plant at a time. He too asserted that the 900-person workforce would not be diminished.

"The employees in the plants are going to stay on for sure, and the CEO will too," Labelle said.
Labelle said the integration will run through the end of 2014 and possibly into early 2015.